Abiro - Mobile News

Location, full circle

2009-07-02T01:33:00.001+02:00

Just a short time after WAP browsers were provided in mobile phones, and even before that via SMS, operators offered “near you” type services that listed (without fancy graphics or maps) e.g. petrol stations in your vicinity. That worked fine, using network-based cell location, except nobody used those services at the time.

A few years ago GPS was all the rage, but it’s still marginally available/used:

Hardly any phones have GPS. Sure, iPhones and BlackBerrys have, but hardly anyone has iPhones and BlackBerrys (despite the media attention they get).
The battery drain is still disastrous.
Sensitivity is also pretty bad, especially on smaller phones, so oftentimes there’s no possibility to determine the location.
Reaching many users (which mobile services must do to get enough revenue or reach) requires cell or (of increasing interest and viability) Wi-Fi location.
GPS also has the drawback of not working at all indoors, however sensitive the receiver is.

Hence, what you need to use today for location is primarily cell-based, either by accessing information in the phone (device dependent/limited but free), or go via location brokers and determine the location via the network (device independent but costly).

I wonder though why GPS power consumption can’t be improved? I’m an amateur at best when it comes to radio electronics, but isn’t a GPS receiver just that, a receiver? So what draws all that current?

New frontiers

2009-07-02T00:25:00.001+02:00

I’ve updated my LinkedIn profile, as things are a-changing, partly explaining my blogging absence:

The biggest change is that I’m co-founder and board member at a new company (yet to be disclosed) that will provide consumer-oriented mobile services, and I will serve as the project leader for the initial service development there, and then switch over to a more or less pure board/adviser role.
My work as CEO at Mobile Labs Sweden AB continues, and we recently announced a very compact vector font rendering solution (< 1M) for Chinese low-end phones.
For Netville I part time (obviously) provide assistance with sales and marketing of professional services for the local telecom market.
Already last year I left as active at mm3 Mobile Channel AB (yet I remain as co-founder).
On my spare “Abiro time” I’m currently involved in 5 parallel development projects (I’m not kidding, but of course only occasionally) on platforms as diverse as Visual Basic, C#, Android Dalvik, Java ME and PHP/MySQL, and in cases in combination.

I own stock in all the mentioned companies, which is my long term strategy for additional (and hopefully in cases “hockey stick”) revenue. This is yet to be proven a sensible strategy. If it works I’ll probably write a book, or buy a Segway.

There will be more stuff happening down the road, but this is enough for now.

Distribution of MIDlets via Kalador/Mobilerated

2009-07-01T22:45:00.001+02:00

Here are some stats and attempts to conclusions gathered from providing mobile applications via mobilerated.com. I can’t give any exact numbers for confidentiality reasons.

Big difference in download/click ratio between applications. Conclusion: Downloading is not all. Repetitive use will create the long term ad revenue, so make useful applications that people want to use again and again. This doesn’t mean “glossy” promotion (an area where I fail utterly) is not important, but it’s definitely not enough if the application is a turkey. E.g. Jitter is downloaded relatively little (for whatever reason) but generates the most ad revenue.
Very little pay despite sizable volumes. Conclusion: Don’t leave your day job on chance.
Noticed at GetJar, but probably applies to Mobilerated as well: There are many more games than applications, so it’s harder to stand out with games. On the other hand, games are much more downloaded than applications. Conclusion: None really, as I have no games to compare with, so draw your own in this case.
Indonesia and India lead, with USA and United Kingdom close seconds. Conclusion: Don’t just go for the Western markets, and don’t think Asian markets are less developed in terms of mobile use. That’s a huge mistake. Oddly Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea don’t show up. Not reached by Mobilerated?
The ad frontend needs to be very polished, clearly pointing out the application is in there, but you need to look at an ad first. When publishing the same ad-enabled applications at GetJar, some user got really angry thinking this was adware, and nothing else. Conclusion: The market needs better in-app solutions. It’s on my (very long) to-do list to make one.

Android, a curiosity to academics

2009-07-01T21:59:00.001+02:00

Is this descriptive of academics’ relation to reality in general? Kind of funny though.

Robots in movies and reality

2009-06-14T01:45:00.001+02:00

After having seen too many movies about the future and often with robots in (that goes for Terminator – Salvation too), here are a few thoughts about the matter, using reverse argumentation. Let’s say 15 years from now.

Robots will look like humans

Maybe some, but there will be mostly task-oriented robots. The human form is clearly not optimal for cleaning, surveillance, bomb disarming, in-body analysis, heavy lifting etc, so why make our new “slaves” look like humans if they are inefficient that way?

Of course, there will be human-looking robots as well, but their applicability is arguable. Would you rather use your future wireless terminal that’s efficient and precise to use, or a robotic bank teller that you have to walk up to and speak to? In Japan there’s talks about having for instance human-looking secretaries, but I just find that freaky, and it seems more like something thought up by a nerdy scientist. Then there’s the question about sexbots. I better stop there.

Robots will be human-size

Most robots will probably be rather small, but could also be very big, again optimized for their use, anywhere from blood vessel size, up to large machines for digging up ore etc.

Robots will be autonomous

I still see too little of this. Most robots of today are simply remotely controlled devices, or controlled by a preset motion pattern. They will not be really interesting until they actually manage on their own most of the time, and rather use central computer or human control as a fallback when “confused” etc.

Of course, autonomous robots need to be able to charge (they will be all electric) and repair themselves. Otherwise they become a burden to humans. Really large or specialized robots will probably require other robots for the repairs.

Robots will communicate via speech

Even with humans probably other ways of communicating (like with text displays, and keypads etc) will be used as well, but especially between robots there’s obviously no reason to use speech. Rather they will use very high speed digital communication (even at longer distances), to exchange text, audio, video, experience patterns, thought patterns, learnt behavior etc. So fast that more intelligent robots could probably exchange a day’s worth of experiences in microseconds.

This is of course not fun in a movie, but movies are movies.

Robots will be used for professional tasks

Surely, but also extensively as toys. See The Longest Journey - Dreamfall for a robotic orangutan (I think) that serves as a PDA and bad conscience as well.

The silliness of Twitter, part 2

2009-06-14T00:47:00.001+02:00

Maybe you noticed #squarespace in my previous silliness of Twitter post.

There’s a company called Squarespace, so I’m just guessing: Could this be a viral marketing campaign from that company?

What did Squarespace do to make users adopt that topic (provided I’m guessing correctly)?

The remaining question in any case is: Why are Twitter users generally so willing to mention topics that have no relevance what-so-ever to what the users are actually tweeting about? What do they think they will achieve, except pushing a topic into the “high score” list. What’s the value of that to the individual, or are maybe ants or borgs (oops!) using Twitter?

A conundrum.

Interestingly and more alarming is one of the new top topics #iranelection, where it’s obvious there are genuine tweets about what’s going on around the election in Iran, and clearly it’s not all good things.

Comparison of leading smartphones

2009-06-13T19:29:00.001+02:00

Gizmodo compares iPhone, Palm Pre, HTC G2/Magic and BlackBerry Storm:

Gizmodo - Smartphone Buyers Guide: The Best of the Best

As competition will be between these phones as well as phones based on LiMo, Symbian and Windows Mobile, it’s an easy guess that evolution of smartphones (or as I use to call them, information-centric phones, or simply infophones or infones) wil be swift, and one or more of these platforms will disappear.

Shedding WML once and for all

2009-06-12T22:41:00.001+02:00

Long overdue, the mobile version of the Abiro site has now been completely converted to basic HTML, that should work on all newer phones. The site is still called wap.abiro.com, but I’ve also set up mobile.abiro.com.

iPhone and Android don’t support WML at all, and there should be very few phones used today that support only WML, so I opted for an HTML-only site. That should make future improvements simpler.

At the moment the content is pretty much the same as before, but this is a preparation for some new things coming up.

The silliness of Twitter

2009-06-09T22:56:00.001+02:00

While testing Android Twitter I noticed:

Twitter shows the most used topics (or keywords) among all Twitter feeds, which of course people have taken advantage of to force specific topics to “win”.

Currently it’s #squarespace and #crapsuperpowers. The other top keywords make sense though.

There’s even an API request to ask about what topics are the hottest right now, meaning you can automate the further domination of those keywords, or try to make something else dominate.

Can use of Twitter get more silly and pointless than this?

Currently, investors are crazy about funding companies that can even spell to Twitter, and most of those companies seem to be as financially unsound (read: without any revenue streams at all) as Twitter itself, yet unfortunately that irrational handing out seems concentrated to Silicon Valley.

Developing applications for Android, part 4

2009-06-09T19:56:00.001+02:00

The Android Twitter clent is “prototype-ready” now. Still not showing user pictures, nor does any kind of formatting of the timeline text (colors would be nice, for instance), but it sure works, and it’s possible to follow links in the messages (actually a feature of the TextView widget).

It’s also been tested on the G1, as can be seen in the photos. After the public demo on Friday the obvious question is: What to do next?

Before a commercial launch is reasonable (what with TwitDroid showing pictures, has user searching etc) at least timelines need to be formatted. Probably the best way to achieve that would be to open a browser view in the lower part of the display, and generate HTML from within the application. I haven’t figured out how to do that though.

In total it’s taken 3 work days of development, and 1 day of reading books and web tutorials, so my other MIDlets would probably also be rather quick to port.

Click on the photos for more detail.

Main display

Main menu

More features are in the sub menu.

The singularity and texting plants

2009-06-07T22:56:00.001+02:00

The singularity in terms of IT is the time when computers/machines/gadgets can make better copies of themselves, creating a constant improvement of technology without the aid of human beings. Sounds a bit like what happens in the Terminator saga, doesn’t it?

Anyway, the Singularity Hub covers improvements to technology that could lead to the singularity, as if it could ever happen. After seeing Terminator Salvation I hope not, but I have to admit, it would probably be quite exciting (as in fatally dangerous) to be a human being then.

Surprisingly cost-efficient (“$250 to wire up a 5,000 tree orchard”) these new gadgets make it possible to track the watering status in professional farms. The devices are solar-powered, so there’s no problem with power either.

It doesn’t tell how, but clearly the devices themselves can’t send SMSs directly to mobile phones (what with SIM cards, enough power etc). Rather there must be some collecting devices that then convert the alerts into SMSs.

Singularity Hub - Thirsty Plants Can Now Use Microchip To Send Text Messages

Sweden Rock Festival and a mobile black hole, part 2

2009-06-07T10:48:00.001+02:00

I added a few photos to Flickr, just to show I was there. They have no other qualities.

Dream Theater

Finally I’ve seen Dream Theater live, and it was very good (read: f****ng great!!!!!). I’ve seen them on DVDs before, and this was in my opinion en par with the best recorded shows. James’ voice didn’t crack up either, so it was all fun and games. They played a gamut of songs from most of their albums. Even songs from theme albums worked well on their own.

They are all very talented musicians, so nothing went wrong in the performance department. They also kept reasonable contact with the audience. They don’t need any gimmicks to pull off a good show (I was afraid the gargoyles beside the scene were theirs, but they were actually for Heaven & Hell).

Parts of the audience chanted each and every song. They played one song from their upcoming album (out end of June) Dark Clouds and Silver Linings: A Rite of Passage. The audience even sang the lyrics to that one. That’s impressive, until I found it’s already out and about on the Web.

The 1.5 hours were over in no time. I wish there had been more of it.

They will play at Hovet in Stockholm during September. See here for the full tour schedule.

Europe

Europe, the Swedish band from the 80’s, has been playing together again for a couple of years, and did quite well at SRF. Seeing them after Dream Theater was probably a bit unfair, but I enjoyed it all the same. I saw them live in 1986, and their confidence was at least 100 times better now.

Continuing mobile distress

Another day of some to no coverage. This is actually unusual for Sweden, as there’s supposed to be coverage even in the mountains of northern Sweden, so it was probably mainly due to overload. I’m sure most took the chance to call between the shows. Calling during shows was impossible, even when standing far away.

I sent an SMS to get the festival programme, but the response SMS never came back.

Some advice to future mobile service providers participating in shows like this:

Make it much more apparent that there are such services. I’m pretty sure no one used the festival programme service, as it was only shown for a few seconds on a very long info rotator on a big screen.
Provide services that are more disruptive and interesting, like getting backstage passes, voting for the best band or whatnot, not just information that could easier and better be obtained on paper. An information site with links to more information about the artists might be fine, but clearly people are not there to surf the Internet.
Make it very clear how much the services cost, so there’s no question about that.
Partner with operators to get better mobile “power” during the festival days. Operators can do that, provided they know beforehand. The SRF organizers should have secured this of course, not individual service providers.

Sweden Rock Festival and a mobile black hole

2009-06-06T00:28:00.001+02:00

I went to SRF in Norje Sweden to see some of my favorite bands.

Neal Morse was the big surprise. Both because I haven’t listened much to his solo albums (he was previously in Spock’s Beard; another one of my favorites), but also because it was so well performed, with a stage presence from all involved that was amazing. Sure, he sings Christian songs now, and he’s pretty serious about it, but the music’s still good. He even sang a duet with his son about finding back to your beliefs (or at least that was what I thought it was about).

Pete Trewavas from Marillion and Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater joined Neal to play the lovely We All Need Some Light from Transatlantic’s SMPTe (Transatlantic is/was a super group consisting of Pete, Mike, Neal and Roine Stolt). I read elsewhere that Transatlantic is rumoured to release a new album this year after a very long hiatus, so maybe this “cameo” was another indication this will actually happen. Mike also jumped in here and there, and even sang instead of Neal in one of the songs.

In comparison Marillion played on auto-gear (except for Steve Hogarth, the singer, that was literally all over the place), but it was nevertheless enjoyable. All songs were from the post-Fish era, as far as I could tell.

Kamelot was also great, and it was clear the Norwegian singer Roy Kahn was delighted by the response from the audience, that was very active even though it was raining heavily during their show (I was soaking wet). Sadly Roy couldn’t hit the high notes he manages on the studio recordings.

I also listened to a Pantera cover band that was remarkably professional, even though they were all quite young.

At the main stage played Jon Oliva’s Pain and Lita Ford. The first had a great guitarist and Jon Oliva was great at playing the piano, so it might be worth checking out their albums, but sound-wise it was not enjoyable at all. Lita Ford’s band played 80s pop-rock. Nothing for me.

Tomorrow it’s time for Dream Theater at the main stage. I hope James LaBrie will not lose his voice, that he tends to do at live shows.

So what were the mobile implications then?

Coverage

None to speak of. Some early in the day, but none during the afternoon.

Mobile services

It was possible to get the festival programme by sending in an SMS, but as there was no coverage this didn’t work. That was the only mobile service I spotted, and I had to watch a long ad/info rotator on a big screen before I spotted this was at all possible.

Why didn’t they put up one of those big LED panels that people could send SMSs to? Just for the fun of it.

E-mail

I had set up all relevant e-mail accounts on my phone before the trip. By using IMAP I was assured that e-mails were handled properly (as if accessed from a PC). But again, no coverage, so no e-mail, and so no possibility to do any work while at the festival. Not altogether bad though…

Voice calls

Oddly voice worked better, but how do you talk while standing a few meters from a stage during a concert?

Photography

Works fine for stage photos, provided the phone has optical zoom. Mine didn’t, so it was often hard to distinguish who were actually standing on stage. Therefore no photos today. Maybe tomorrow.

Color ebook reader from iRex

2009-06-03T22:48:00.001+02:00

A nice improvement over the few gray shades you get from current E-Ink technology. You don’t need color for vanilla literature, but there’s nothing saying that even literature needs to stay the same forever, and color certainly gives life and detail to fact books, comics, etc.

iRex Technologies Developing a High Quality, Full Color Digital Reader.

“iRex’s subtractive color mixing technology will allow us to produce a wide range of colors in high resolution to deliver magazine‐quality color to our e‐reader customers.”

First Android phone in Europe

2009-06-03T22:39:00.001+02:00

The first one out is the HTC Magic. Spotted at 3 Sweden, but not yet at 3 UK.

3 Sweden – HTC Magic

A really nice phone, slimmer than the G1 as it has no alphanumeric keypad.

Developing applications for Android, part 3

2009-06-01T21:20:00.001+02:00

We just decided to use my Twitter application as a proof of concept demo for Android application development in a local public forum (Oops!), so I better complete it.

Whether I will actually do any business with Android applications is a completely different story. Much more important things call for my attention at the moment.

Omar Hamoui on entrepreneurship

2009-05-31T10:28:00.001+02:00

Omar Hamoui is the founder of AdMob, the world’s largest mobile ad broker. AdMob was founded in early 2006 and are now over 100 employees. A success no doubt, especially as Google (with its Adwords/Adsense) doesn’t seem to be able to knock AdMob from the top position, and to my knowledge AdMob is quite profitable.

Interesting “solve my own problem” starting point: “Omar Hamoui wanted to build traffic for his mobile site. He encountered complexity and fragmentation - it was just too hard to engage users. AdMob was born to remove roadblocks and enable mobile web businesses.”
Distorted by marketing speak (“engage users”?), but nevertheless indicates Omar had a real need of ads himself.

On Ideas and Company Launches

On Deals and Negotiations

On Sales and Marketing

On Competitive Threats and Team

On Communication and a Final Thought

Upcoming Android devices

2009-05-25T15:48:00.001+02:00

Just browsed through Engadget. Not just phones.

From Motorola:

Motorola's Sawgrass, Android-powered Heron do the vertical slide onto AT&T?

From HTC:

From Sony Ericsson:

Sony Ericsson drops clues on Android 2.0-based smartphone

From Samsung:

Samsung i7500 to be renamed Galaxy, released in France in early July

From SDG Systems:

Trimble Nomad handheld gets Android 1.5 upgrade
Navigation something or other

From Archos:

Archos event June 11th: 5-inch Android tablet with voice expected
Web tablet

From Fujitsu:

Fujitsu and Macnica embed Android into digital photo frames -- WalMart, you listening?
Photo frame

There plenty more:

Search for Android at Engadget

Developing applications for Android, part 2

2009-05-24T20:43:00.001+02:00

I had the Jitter code and most of the UI ported on Friday, and it all compiled then, but nothing really worked. In part because I ran into a problem with the build path for the project, that took a few hours to track down, and I’m still not quite sure if I made a mistake or there’s a real problem with ADT.

Anyway, this is how the application looks right now:

It’s rather user-hostile at the moment, and the only thing that really works end-to-end is Update. I can retrieve Timelines as well, but there’s a problem with accessing UI widgets from another thread. Probably perfectly logical, but I haven’t been able to understand why this is yet, and how to get around it.

Update and Timelines will probably be provided via separate screens rather than on the main screen. I have to test what works best. I will also try to show user thumbnails, format message text, extract clickable links and support emoticons.

As there’s already good Twitter applications (including Twidroid) for Android, I don’t expect my application to become a hit, if it even will be released publicly. It’s mainly a way for me to learn the application paradigm of Android. There might be an opportunity to make a specialized Twitter client, that adds GPS or cell position, sends messages based on incoming SMSs, attaches photos to the Tweets etc etc.

So far I’ve spent almost a work day (read: 8 hours) reading up on Android development, and close to two work days developing (and drinking lots of coffee, and cursing). I will need approx one more work day to get all Twitter features running, and probably one or two more for optimizing the UI, but lead time wise it will take at least a week.

Developing applications for Android

2009-05-21T14:57:00.001+02:00

Not quite yet in my case, but I’ve read “Hello, Android” (recommended) and gone through most of the examples provided with the book, as well as built and tweaked them to see how stuff work.

I’m using the Eclipse + ADT combo. I tried using NetBeans + nbandroid, but never got that to work with Android 1.5. I might try that later, but it really doesn’t matter what IDE is used.

My first project will be to port Abiro Jitter to Android. It’s enough to provide some challenge. Not that the world is void of Twitter clients for Android, but considering such a client can tweet about so much more than just what the user might want to say, it’s still worth the effort, and an interesting platform for other application experiments. It’s also a relatively simple application overall.

The UI is currently my main concern, as the paradigm is quite different from that in MIDP. All the Twitter protocol stuff I’ve obviously already implemented (from scratch; there were no free libs at the time), and it’s all Java (yet with some other classes than ME and SE) and communication is via HTTP, so hopefully not much else should cause problems.

Sign of the times: Even Smurfs come from China

2009-05-19T21:52:00.001+02:00

Sorry for further lowering the quality of this blog, but I guess I’m too busy to write anything serious and balanced at the moment.

I earlier reported about most consumer devices being made in China, and it would not be far-fetched to suggest that cultural icons like Smurfs also would come from China, even though they are distributed by a German toy company.

Here’s the whole set, with the latest in 1” netbooks. The keys are a bit small, but that doesn’t matter much, as the screen only has 176*184 pixels (the resolution of a VIC-20), and it can only run VIC-20 games and applications with Smurf in the name.

Just kidding, or am I? Actually a computer capable of running VIC-20 applications could be made this small. It’s the UI that’s the problem, but at least my Smurfs approve (Papa Smurf drinks to it).

Actually I bought the Smurfs to use as office decoration, and the PC doesn’t work, I think.

Amazon Kindle DX and ebook evolution

2009-05-17T11:42:00.001+02:00

Updated after reading what this device is all about.

Amazon’s Kindle DX is a larger Kindle deriving from the technology in Kindle 2. It’s got a 10” display instead of the 6” on the Kindle 2, has more Flash memory than the Kindle 2, and can auto-rotate pages, but apart from that it’s pretty much the same as a Kindle 2.

It seems optimized for reading documents with pictures and lots of text per page in PDF format, like computing and educational books, rather than literature. It’s also suited for people that need the extra size for larger letters while reading literature.

$489 is even steeper than the Kindle 2, but I still want one. If they had taken out the mobile radio it probably would have been $100 less.

Amazon: Kindle DX: Amazon's 9.7" Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation)

PC World - A Guided Tour: Hands On With the Kindle DX

TechCrunch - Rampant Piracy Will Be The Kindle DX’s Savior

Engadget - Amazon Kindle DX announced: $489, ships this summer

Electronista - Amazon launches 9.7-inch Kindle DX

Not about the DX specifically, but the Kindle phenomenon:

MSN Money - Kindle users are old

Anecdote: Black holes and … socks

2009-05-17T11:20:00.001+02:00

For what it’s worth, here’s a conversation with a guy who’s slightly more well-versed in astronomy than I am.

The mobile angle: “In space, no one can hear you scream … because there’s no coverage.”

And no, brane is not the same as brain, but short for the multi-dimensional membrane that supposedly our universe is a side effect of. I wonder how they came up with that theory though.

Question

I read the answer to the question about the size of a black hole (at Curious about Astronomy?), and I'm wondering what the event horizon has to do with the size. I guess it's rather the size of a quark, or even nothing (a real hole in 3D (or higher) space, into the brane). Analogy: When measuring the size of a vacuum cleaner (read: black hole) you don't count the distance at which socks (read: light) are sucked in. Bad analogy, but you get my drift.

Cheers,
Anders

Answer

I love the analogy actually, but the problem is what if you had to use socks to learn about the vacuum cleaner. ie information is carried via socks (light) and so we need to be able to grab some socks to learn about things, then the best we can do is say there is a region from which no socks are ever emitted and to which socks are constantly lost once they enter the region. Then the best we can do is quantify the size of the region, by giving the size of the event horizon. In fact if socks are light then we would never know that what was in fact responsible was a vacuum cleaner, which means further that we cant talk about the size of the vacuum cleaner itself but only the size of the region it impacts.

For this reason we don't actually know the state of matter inside an event horizon it is possible that some new degeneracy pressure kicks in and actually maintains a finite sized ball for a while inside the event horizon, and that as the black hole grows in mass it eventually overcomes the pressure and has a supernova like explosion (but all contained inside the event horizon). However it is most often stated as you have that the size of the actual matter that creates the black hole is actually infinitesimal, ie a true singularity of completely collapsed matter or energy.

Put simply, our ignorance of physics at such matter densities (an ignorance which is not likely going to go away since an event horizon is created at these densities which obscures the events inside it) prevents us from talking about the size of anything but the event horizon.

Hope that helps,
Istvan Laszlo

Question

Thanks for the elaborate response, and continuation of the slightly flawed sock model :).

The reason I asked the question was that I've read articles stating the actual size to be that of a particle (or even nothing) as if it was somehow proven. I understand now it isn't.

Would it be right to say that the radius of the event horizon is proportional (not necessarily linearly) to the mass of the black hole, and that is all that can be measured? What about determining the contents of a black hole (relative quantity of types of particles)? Impossible to know? I figure atoms are torn apart already in neutron stars, so the difference in a black hole _might_ be total collapse, but not necessarily.

Anders

Answer

Yes the event horizon radius is 3 times the mass, if you want radius in kilometers and the mass is given in solar masses. (This is true for a nonrotating blackhole, and is a theoretical result which could be tested but has not yet.

This brings up an interesting point, the size of the singularity is in theory zero ie a true singularity, however this cannot be tested, and anything compressed to a size smaller than the 3M limit of the objects event horizon would be a black hole.

Indeed we cannot really say what kind of particles the matter is in, likely it is not neutrons since neutron degeneracy pressure prevents black hole formation once its over come the main particle constituent may be quarks, but we dont know (in fact it is possible quarks would also prevent black hole formation and need to be destroyed to make a black hole.

So basically as you say atoms are torn apart but to what degree we just don't know.

Hope that helps,
Istvan Laszlo

Well, there you have it.

Really thin TVs

2009-05-15T22:17:00.001+02:00

And I mean sub-mm thin.

Sony and others will release large displays based on OLED technology where the display layer is just 0.3 mm and the whole kit with a protecting layer etc is 0.9 mm.

Display technologies evolve very quickly now, moving from decimeters, to centimeters, to millimeters in a few years, not by optimizing a certain technology, but by rapidly moving to completely new technologies.

I expect OLED displays to completely take over from LCD and Plasma displays, provided that OLED displays can be made bright enough, and it seems they already are.

They will be used for TVs, computer displays, mobile phones, media players, ebooks, magazines, posters, “paintings”, you name it. Very likely they will (as listed) also open up for new types of devices.

OLED-Display.net

(the English is even worse than at my site, so beware)

There are also very flat speakers available, vibrating the whole surface. Maybe such could be used for smaller TVs put on the wall, or for small media players etc.

NFC on posters

2009-05-10T22:14:00.001+02:00

Not meaning anyone is promoting NFC on posters. I’m rather meaning the NFC Smart Poster Specification.

Actually it’s remarkably quiet about the technology that is intended to turn mobile phones into wallets and ID cards. Also, how many phones have you seen in USA or Europe with NFC?

As most of you know (no? really?) NFC is based on RFID, as in Radio Frequency Identification, but could be said to be a narrowing in terms of radio frequencies and distance, yet an extension in terms of use cases for primarily mobile phones. While RFID now supports numerous different frequencies and longer distance transfers (like 10 meters or so, best case), NFC is specifically geared towards very short distance transfers, like a few centimeters, to avoid eavesdropping (at least in theory) and make device discovery simple (a major problem with Bluetooth, if used for the same types of applications).

To enable the wallet and ID card functionality the NFC component is generally put in the SIM card, that is essentially a Smart Card. That way providing a closed “block” that can’t be tampered with to falsify identity, provided of course your phone is not stolen.

Smart Poster enables actual posters containing NFC tags to convey messages to services, e.g. for rebates. It’s really very simple: The tag can contain information (typically a keyword for addressing the service and associated service parameters) and a destination number, that will be sent as an SMS. The tag can also contain information for accessing the service via the phone’s browser. In both cases the tag houses all this information in a URL, even for SMS transfer. Developing services for Smart Poster is therefore very simple too, similar to handling inbound SMS’s that users have written themselves, or like handling service-to-service queries via HTTP.

The question is when NFC will reach critical mass. It will take years.

NFC Forum – Specification Download